


Maternal

by DragonflyxParodies



Series: Capricorn [14]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Batman: Under the Red Hood (2010), DCU, DCU (Comics), Gotham City Sirens (Comics), Red Hood: Lost Days
Genre: Bruce Wayne is a Bad Parent, Gen, Good Parent Talia al Ghul, Mother-Son Relationship, Past Talia al Ghul/Bruce Wayne, Talia considers her options, Talia makes mom friends, and decides to fuck bruce up, to protect her boys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-30
Updated: 2020-09-30
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:47:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26732365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DragonflyxParodies/pseuds/DragonflyxParodies
Summary: On Talia and her sons.((Or; she makes her decisions deliberately, even if they will never know why))
Relationships: Talia al Ghul & Bruce Wayne, Talia al Ghul & Damian Wayne, Talia al Ghul & Harleen Quinzel, Talia al Ghul & Jason Todd, Talia al Ghul & Pamela Isley, Talia al Ghul & Selina Kyle
Series: Capricorn [14]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1045871
Comments: 34
Kudos: 319





	Maternal

Talia has always been possessive. It is her fatal character flaw, one her father lauds as strength of will and of character and one she knows will lead her to her own end like a familiar friend, smiling all the while.

Bruce is the penultimate example of this.

Jason is the most recent.

His existence has served two purposes, neither of which her father has ever guessed at correctly. He still thinks it some game to make Bruce love her again, to hand the poor child up on a silver platter and a demure smile and play at husband and wife ever after.

She _has_ a son, a son in desperate need of safety and surety. A son antithetical by his very nature to everything his father stands for.

So.

Jason serves two purposes, two scenarios, two plans. First, and most plainly; to see if Bruce is capable of moving past bloody hands and wet blades and graves left in his son’s wake. If he can accept the son he has loved and trained and lost, he will accept the son he has not.

And second; to cleave the man’s heart from his chest. He had loved that child and buried that child, and here Talia has given him back; but Jason has grown and changed, and if Bruce cannot love him for that, then all that will be left is a hole in the shape of a _son_ in the Bat’s soul.

Either way Damian will have a home.

X

Things change the minute Jason’s blood sprays through the air, painting his father and his murderer in the same cloth, and Talia realizes that just because she’d refused to say so doesn’t mean Jason _isn’t_ her _son._

X

The woman they call Poison Ivy earns her respect before Talia can fall to the woman’s side and press her own hands to Jason’s pulse. Selina Kyle stands guard above them, and at her call comes to help raise her son from his bed of rubble and ash.

She changes her opinion of Quinn when the woman takes her wrist, once the helicopter has again taken flight, and holds her back from her son just long enough to say _he was dead when we found him_. Quinn is grave and serious, pale beneath her makeup. Talia nods, and pulls away.

Bruce will be dealt with later.

X

She doesn’t like to linger on it, even now; but she’d nearly lost him without ever letting herself recognize what he meant to her. She didn’t like to admit that she could be so fucking _wrong_ that it nearly – that it _did –_ cost her son his life.

X

She does not make the decision to shatter Damian’s world, but she does not consider that he will inevitably be waiting for her return. His compound is the safest from her father; the four of them are unloading Jason when Damian runs up and she cannot coddle her child then, not with his brother still so fragile.

And – after, after Jason is stable and Damian is pale and frightened but asleep at his brother’s side, and Jason’s other mothers are suitably settled – _then_ Talia sits and considers what few options she has left.

Damian will need to be trained. She will continue his foundation, but when he comes ready for more…

Jason will need something to cling to, in the wake of this betrayal. He is an adult by every standard but that of her heart; in age and mastery and skill. But he will need to be stable, first, she thinks, and that gives her pause.

Did she really mean…?

But, of course – what better to ruin her former beloved with? What better to keep her family together with? What better to ensure her boys remain safe, when her father inevitably discovers what she has done?

Bruce had proven untrustworthy in such a public way that Gotham itself hisses the truth from across the world. She owes him nothing, not anymore.

So she breathes, and calms herself, and then washes her son’s blood from her hands.

If that is taken care of; there is still the matter of Gotham to handle.

X

_That_ is a vengeance years in the making.

X

Jason washes his hands of Bruce when he wakes. Quinn is an astoundingly gifted therapist; she tucks Jason away with her four a few hours every few days, and their son does not shatter into quite so many pieces as he would have without her.

Damian does not speak of his father to her. He asks Jason a few, cursory questions, and holds his thoughts close to his chest. She allows this; it is her pushing and her guiding that has put Damian is such a precarious position. She will not make that mistake again, though it breaks her heart to let him suffer so.

But her boys will be fine. They will be safe. They are, after all, her sons.

X

She doesn’t expect the rage that consumers her at the sight of her once-beloved, but she adjusts.

She sets her plans neatly to the side, and embraces every piece of her weak, selfish heart.

She _brags_.

She throws it in his face. She mocks him. She settles into Gotham with a vengeance, and twists the city until it belongs to her, to her sons, and he cannot escape it. She forges alliances, makes _friends_ , and doesn’t so much as play the part of a doting mother as embrace it. She thrives, and so do her boys. Not in spite of his absence. _Because_ of his absence.

She is the one to walk Jason down the aisle, arm-in-arm with Poison Ivy, when he finally agrees to hold a ceremony that Earth will recognize. She is the one to attend Damian’s graduation, and applaud his valedictorian speech.

She is the one to hold her grandchildren in her arms, hours after their birth.

X

And he has _nothing_.

**Author's Note:**

> IDK if y'all have picked up on it but like  
> everybody in this au just deals with Bruce by freezing him out  
> and Talia is absolutely the origin of this.


End file.
